Vertical Playpen

When making your activity agenda it can be helpful to intentionally pick activities that can help you read your group. In this episode we explore what some of these activities are and their benefits. In order to better explore this concept, Phil calls up 8 of his facilitator friends to ask them what activities they use and why. These facilitators are:

- Chris Damboise (Director of Training and Team Development, High 5)

- Ryan McCormick (Edge of Leadership Director, High 5)

- Greg Urban (Project Adventure)

- Justin McGlamery (Focus Your Locus)

- Rick Keegan (Trainer, High 5)

- Lisa Hunt (Manager of Team Development, High 5)

- Megan Meinan (UVM)

- Chris Ortiz (Penn State)

Bob Ryan (Director of Safety and Risk Management at Project Adventure) chats with Chris Damboise (Director of Training and Team Development at High 5) about his introduction to the adventure industry, his work with writing standards and his program recommendations based on his risk management experience.

Chris, Lisa and Phil talk about High 5's ACCT certification process including how to prepare, why you might want a certification, what the process looks like, and common pitfalls we see as examiners. Chris also introduces the concept of Education - Preparation - Illumination - Certification.

In this episode, Phil and Jim are joined by Adam Ames (Type A) to discuss his experience being trained by Jim, the impact it had on him and the visual art piece that resulted from their experiences.

Check out Type A's Team building (Align) here - typea.us/align

Lisa and Phil discuss the concept of Risk Homeostasis Theory and how it presents itself in adventure programming and challenge course operations.

Books referenced in this episode are:

Target Risk by Gerald J. S. Wilde - download a free digital copy here: riskhomeostasis.org/links-to-target-risk

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

Sherry Bagley (AEE Executive Director) discusses her journey to leading AEE, all of the great ways to volunteer for the organization and the future of experiential education.

The upcoming AEE International Virtual Conference info can be found here: aee.org/2020-international-virtual-conference

Chris, Lisa and Phil discuss a concept that is a large part of High 5 trainings and also features in some of our books; The Thinking Practitioner. It can be applied to both challenge course operation as well as adventure activities and leads to more confident and competent practitioners.

Hutch Hutchinson (Senior Lecturer at Boston University Questrom School of Business) shares his road to working in Experiential Education, his love of the AEE community and the history of Outdoor Education based on his dissertation "Crafting an Outdoor Classroom: The Nineteenth Century Roots of the Outdoor Education Movement".

Katherine Conway (AMIGOS) discusses the importance of experiencing different cultures, conflict resolution strategies and gap year programming.

Find more about AMIGOS here: amigosinternational.org

In this episode Phil discusses the 4 primary neurochemicals that elicit happiness; Endorphins, Dopamine, Serotonin and Oxytocin, as well as activities that you can use with your participants to help participants experience them.

Disclaimer: Phil is not a neuroscientist.